Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis

Inner and outer 179

The third type, replication activities, focus on outcome rather than form.
To quote further:

They are called replication activities because they replicate within the

classroom aspects of communication in the real world. There is a wealth

of activities already accessible to teachers involving games, problem solving,

information gathering and so on in which learners use language for real

communication. In these activities, they ask questions because they need

to know the answers in order to solve a problem or win a game, not

simply to show they can produce question forms in English. The forms

of the language they use are in no way predetermined. They can use

whatever language they wish in order to achieve the desired outcome

quickly and efficiently.

(p. 59)

The ‘discourse activities’ as described and analysed in Warren (1985), the
chaired and unchaired student group discussions in Singapore classrooms as
reported in Davis (1987), and the oral communication tasks analysed and
described in Bygate (1988 and 1991), are examples of replication activities.
Implicit in all this is the belief that, in terms of discourse structure, the
conditions for almost any form of language use can be reproduced in the
classroom. Replication activities also form the basis of the Collins Cobuild
English Course, Levels 1 to 3 (Willis, J and Willis, J.D. 1988–9).
An example of a replication activity in the form of an extract from the
data recorded by Bygate (1988) follows. The students, Peruvians, in
groups of four, are about to play a game of ‘Twenty Questions’ where
they have to guess the name of the country written on the card picked
by one player.
I have added numbers and analysed the exchange types below according
to J.Willis (1981).

Example 7
1 S12: am I am I supposed to er ask questions
S9: Yes

2 S10: we’re going to ask you questions and you will answer them so we

3 S9: [yeah] one player takes a card /? / —the others try to guess what
country
S10: yeah

4 S9 so you turn
S10: OK

5 S10: I where which continent is that country
S12: s south america
S11: ehm south america